Welcome to Litsy!

Not my favorite Mary Roach but that‘s because I‘m more interested (for better or worse) in topics like the afterlife, wildlife, & outer space than I am in care of the human body while we‘re alive. Wise? No! Yet true.

Still fascinating (though it made me grimace a few times & I‘ve got a pretty strong stomach).

I remain convinced that Mary Roach is THE coolest person. I hope she gets a personal pig so she can live & write for a very long time. 🐷

Are you curious about replacement organs and transplants? Body science? Medical history? Mary Roach approaches all of this with her usual humor in this new release. I learned quite a bit as always.

“People don‘t realize how dangerous anesthesia can be, said Jordan Newmark, who is the anesthesiologist I met. “I‘ve been saying for years, they should make a movie like Top Gun but about anesthesiology,” he said when we first spoke. At the time, this confused me. It was as though Jordan had access to some bizarro elevator-pitch app that randomly combined hit movies with medical specialties. Like Gladiator, but about urology. He was insistent:

“Stoodley doesn‘t dwell on it. “There are two kinds of micro-biologists,” he said. “There are the ones who say, “Bacteria are everywhere! We‘ve got to sterilize everything!” His wife is one of those. “Then there‘s the ones who say, “Bacteria are everywhere! And yet we‘ve survived! “ That‘s Stoody. “I‘m very cavalier,” he said. I am too, though a little less so now. One thing I‘m funny about is drinking from Mason jars. You just know there‘s mouth-

#2025Book45

“Certain surgeons kind of like thump their chest that they made such a big one,” Garcia is saying. He takes a last swallow of Chianti. “It‘s so stupid.” (In fairness to surgeons, trans men fairly commonly, Garcia says, request a neophallus larger than the average natal penis. But the extreme cases seem to have been the surgeons doing.) “

“I find equally remarkable the inventiveness and confidence of surgeons who dream up operations like this one. Who looks at the human digestive tract and thinks, moist, tubular, stretchy…Might that make a reasonable vagina?”

“Locanda Veneta is an old-school Italian restaurant in the shadows of the Cedars-Sinai urology building, in Los Angeles. It is quiet, softly lit, and a bit of a splurge. It‘s the kind of place you might take your date for a romantic meal, especially if your date is , as mine is, a urologist. I‘ve reserved table 12, a cozy corner two- top where most other patrons can‘t see or hear you, and the banquette is just long enough for two people to -

The original Mr. Potato Head kit in fact had no potato. It was sold as a set of plastic body parts and accessories to be poked into an actual potato supplied by parents. After years of complaints--rotting potatoes in the playroom, children poking themselves and choking on tiny mustaches and pipes--Hasbro began including a plastic “potato body“ and accessories large enough to pass choke-tube tests.

For reasons that remain a mystery, a heart needs a brain. When a person is declared brain-dead, their heart--along with their other organs--begins to fail around after twelve hours, even if the body is being oxygenated on a ventilator. The blood vessels lose tone, the capillaries start to leak, and within forty-eight hours its all over.

With the 1914 discovery of the anticoagulent sodium nitrate and the pressing demands of world wars, public blood donation began to go mainstream. Whereupon the new challenge was human squeamishness. Up through the 1940s, donor centers would set up chairs alongside arm-sized holes cut into a wall-sized partition. Donors would slide their arm through a hole, making a donation without ever having to see the blood, the needle, or the...

Burn survivors can develop hypothermia in a 70 degree room. ICUs and ORs for survivors of major burns are often kept at 90 or even 105 degrees, nurses and surgeons sweating under their scrubs and sterile gowns.

Between 13 and 25 percent of surgeons grapple with substance abuse at some point in their careers.

“The chilled heart sits in a bowl while the two surgeons work the tubes. With no blood pumping through, a heart is a pale, floppy thing, a far cry from the familiar red graphic of emojis and Valentines cards. This one, at the moment, reminds me of a skinless, boneless chicken breast. Drake holds a slice of the aorta and passes me a pair of surgical scissors so I can get a sense of how thick and rubbery it is. I would defy you to distinguish-

As far back as 1500 BC, in India, and extending through the Roman Empire and ninth century Ireland, nasal mutilation was a form of punishment. Because of the organ's visibility, sitting as it does in the middle of the face, nasal disfigurement served as both humiliation and a warning to the populace. Noses were hacked off for thievery, tax evasion, adultery, disloyalty. Bounties were placed on enemy noses. Entire towns denosed.

Rhinoplasty was the original plastic surgery.

For every step forward, three go nowhere. Progress doesn't march, it lurches.

Mary continues to be the most delightful pop sci author I‘ve read! In this one, she takes a look at the people and technology around replacement or adapted body parts. She talks to experts in hair transplants and how they might provide a window in to developing other autologous organs. She looks at the challenges of 3D printing tissues. And hangs out with ostomy patients and folks with prostheses to learn more about how those affect their lives.

I‘m going to start this one right away. I‘m tempted to read “the ass man” chapter first. It‘s on surgical procedures. I‘ve noticed a real proliferation of buttocks enhancing leggings and work-out clothes especially in work-out videos. 🍑

Mary Roach! I wasn‘t expecting a new Mary Roach book this fall and was very excited! Body horror! Science!

I‘m happy to report Mary Roach‘s latest is a ton of fun! It‘s about human anatomy, specifically the parts we can or are trying to be able to replace. Think hair plugs, prostheses, organ transplant. I snort laughed in any number of places. Be aware this is not for the squeamish—she doesn‘t hold back on descriptions of surgical dissection.

ALA 2025 haul! My wife went for work, and I got a ticket for the last day for myself. We got to see Joe Hill speak and attended an Author Gala tea event that included Mary Roach, Sarah Penner, and Kiran Desai. Things were pretty well picked over by the last day, but I'm happy with what I got and it was a fun day with @WildAlaskaBibliophile